In the US alone, breast cancer is the second leading cause of female cancer mortality. Each year breast cancer strikes more than 200,000 US women and results in the deaths of approximately 40,000. Early detection is the key to saving lives and reducing the cost of treating breast cancer. The American Cancer Society reports that 96% of all women survive breast cancer when it is detected in its early stages; however, one in four is unlikely to survive with late detection (1). The average cost of treating early breast cancer today is estimated to be between $10,000 and $15,000, while late stage treatments average more than $100,000. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a widely used clinical soft-tissue diagnosis tool that has enjoyed significant success. However, commercially available whole-body imaging systems with large encircling coils are less efficient when the goal is to obtain detailed, high-resolution images from a localized area such as the female breast. Researchers have recognized these limitations and have developed a number of specialized designs, mostly related to breast-encircling coils, such as illustrated generically in FIG. 1. A good example of the present state-of-the-art in RF coil development is encapsulated in the U.S. Pat. No. 6,023,166 (Feb. 8, 2000) issued to Greg Eydelman of Fonar Corporation. Eydelman built a system consisting of a primary RF coil encircling the entire human chest and two secondary (two winding) RF coils fitted over each breast.
Additional single loop (U.S. Pat. No. 5,646,530, Diagnostic Instruments, Jul. 8, 1997) or array coil (U.S. Pat. No. 6,493,572, Toshiba, Dec. 10, 2002) configurations have been proposed. Particularly the array coil concept attempts to capitalize on the use of multiple receiver channels to improve signal-to-noise ratio. Unfortunately, these multi-loop coil configurations are less efficient due to their fixed wire arrangement; they typically cover only a small region of interest (ROI) in the center of the breast and leave critical areas near the breast bone insufficiently covered.
There exists, therefore, a need to provide an anatomically shaped coil that covers the entire extent of a ROI, such as a breast volume, which is better suited to detect the early onset of cancer, for instance by being more sensitive to the increased water content associated with malignancy. A high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) RF coil may provide sufficient sensitivity to yield a detectable response in localized increases in blood volume present during angiogenic activity observed in early tumor growth.